Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I propose to share my time with Deputies Pat Buckley and Martin Kenny.

I commend the members of the Rural Independent Group for bringing forward the motion which I believe is extremely important. It is good that we are talking about the issue. I have had occasion to see on a number of levels the operation of the home help service in action. I have represented home helps for many years. It is not true to say HSE home helps will not work at weekends, as has been suggested. They will work at weekends; they want to work at weekends and are only too happy to work outside normal hours because they do not offer just a nine-to-five service. We would like to see the Government funding this service and not running to the private sector to provide it. The fact that there are advertisements on radio placed by private services does not indicate that the public services are failing, rather it indicates that the Government favours private providers, from which we do not see value for money or a good return on the investment made.

I also had occasion to see the home help service work in the case of my uncle Bernard. I call him my uncle, but he was just one of the people to whom I was very close and he passed away on Sunday. He had Parkinson's disease and his home help, literally, was a lifeline. Like everybody else, he had to fight for every single hour and minute of home help he received. Our medical and health professionals and scientists are enabling people to live longer, which is really good and positive. Unfortunately, the efforts of the scientists and doctors have not been matched on the political side in coming up with solutions to help people to stay in their own homes. We need to plan for a society that is ageing. To do this we need help and an input from experts and stakeholders in the field. We also need to listen to home helps. Very often I hear people say they cannot get a home help to work at certain hours or in certain circumstances. That is not the case. I have never worked with a more flexible group of workers. They provide a huge amount of care and we are going to need to rely on these services more. We can see that the number over the age of 65 years has increased by 19.1% to 637,567 since 2j011. There was also a 15.6% increase in the number over the age of 85 years. It is fantastic and I hope we will all get to live to a good age, but, unfortunately, the default position of successive Governments has been to allow carers, families and loved ones to carry the can. Today one in 20 people is a family carer. Collectively, they provide unpaid care worth a staggering €10 billion each year. When people have come to meet me, I have told them that if there was a carers' strike, Ireland would grind to a halt. Of course, they do not strike as they are busy just getting on with it. We need to ensure we will plan to have services available and that we will look at the demographic evidence to see what services will be needed in the future. We also need to talk to older people, the people who need a hand and supports, to ask them what they want. That is why it is important that home help and home care packages are provided on a statutory basis. It would mean that people could count on availing of the service as a right.

My uncle Bernard worked hard all of his life. He was my father's best friend and they first met 57 years ago when they worked at Cahill May Roberts. He was a driver and my father a van boy. They worked every single day of their lives and paid tax. At the end, when Bernard was sick, he had to fight again for a home help service in order that he could be at home and live with a little dignity. The statistics are all moving in the one direction. Ireland has an ageing population, which is a positive development, but we need to put and secure in place the right to a home care package and to remain in one's own home and the dignity it gives.

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